Anthony Hopkins stars as C.S. Lewis, and Debra Winger as Joy Davidman, the American divorcée who works her way into his heart. The production values are excellent, the acting is fabulous, the story is moving. This film may have introduced the handful of people in North America who had not yet heard of C.S. Lewis to his writings.

The purist in me whines that Hollywood, as usual, took liberty with the story: amalgamating Davidman's two sons into one character, and creating a few fictional characters as foils for the Lewis and Davidman characters to show up. Then, too, Lewis is shown as a bit of a prig, and his theology (especially his theology of suffering as worked out in The Problem of Pain, which may well be one of the most important contributions to twentieth-century thought) is portrayed as a bit shallow and mechanistic, which is hardly fair to him, even before Davidman came into his life. Thus, the original BBC adaptation is more accurate, but this is still a thoroughly enjoyable and moving film, and will hopefully spark people's interest in Lewis, and encourage more of them to explore his books.